LAb[au] is an artist group located in Brussels, Belgium. It has been founded with the aim to examine the influence of advanced technologies in the forms, methods and content of art. With a background in architecture their members and projects are con- cerned with the construct of ‘space’ and the way it can be planned, experienced and conceptualised in an information age.
Even if their projects can be classified as urbanism, design, art, music or dance they all are grounded on an architectural thinking. The attention lies in the relation between architecture, light and advanced technologies.
Following cybernetics LAb[au] projects deal with processes and systems based on different rules. The setting of these rules becomes the major artistic act, the creation process, defining the content and message of the artwork, its architecture as code.
This method is determined by the technological and artistic parameters and which LAb[au] qualifies as ‘MetaDesign’. It focuses on the transcription of information and its processes to textual, graphic, visual, sonic, spatial... forms, artefacts.
The group name of LAb[au] inhabits a phonetic and a written meaning – the one of the French pronunciation ‘labo’ standing for an experimental approach and the one of "bau" (german word for construction).
This alliance between theory and practice motivated the group to found the gallery ‘MediaRuimte’ in the city centre of Brussels in 2003. The gallery work stands for LAb[au]’s typical function of a collaborative agency as for a trans-disciplinary work.
LAb[au] showed its work at Kunst-Station Sankt Peter (Cologne, 2010), BOZAR (Brussels, 2009), Emocao Art.ficial (Sao Paolo, 2008), Club|Transmediale (Berlin, 2007), TENT. / Witte de With (Rotterdam, 2006), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, several times), Sonar (Barcelona, 2004), New Museum (New York, 2003), Nabi Art Center (Seoul, 2003), ICA (London, 2002), Bauhaus (Dessau, several times), Louvre (Paris, 2000), Ars Electronica (Linz, 1999), .... among many others.